OWEN COYLE has worked with both John Hughes and Derek McInnes and gives his views on them to Hugh Keevins

WHEN Derek McInnes asked Owen Coyle what he thought about him taking the job of Aberdeen manager the answer was a challenge and a promise in one sentence.

“The man who gets that club right will take the roof off Pittodrie,” said the former St Johnstone, Burnley and Wigan boss.

The presence of 40,000 Dons fans at Celtic Park tomorrow hoping to see their club win a trophy for the first time since 1995 would seem to offer proof McInnes might be that man.

When Coyle assesses Inverness going into the League Cup final against Aberdeen on the back of bad results, negative publicity and rows over manager John Hughes’ outbursts, he leaps to the defence of his former co-manager at Falkirk.

He said: “There’s far more to Yogi than just a hard man with a lot to say – and he ticks all of the boxes for management.”

Coyle knows both cup final managers from a professional and personal perspective well enough to go behind their spats in print this week to offer a true assessment of each one’s qualities.

What he won’t do is offer an opinion on which one of his friends will lift the first trophy of the season.

He said: “It’s not as if it’s David playing Goliath. They’re not far apart in the Premiership and Albion Rovers showed against Rangers that anything can happen in this game.

“Aberdeen are the favourites, but my only wish is that both sides perform well and that the best team on the day wins.”

Coyle and Hughes were thrown together when they were asked to take joint control of Falkirk in 2003, following Ian McCall’s move to manage Dundee United.

It looked like chalk and cheese where the affable Owen and the confrontational John were concerned but Coyle offers a different insight.

He said: “The chemistry between us was brilliant. I was a striker who had played against Yogi many times over the years and knew how much he loved the battle.

“Every goal I scored against him, and there were many of them, was like a personal insult to him. But we were respectful of each others’ qualities.

“When we were thrown together in management we knew we had different ?personalities. I talked a lot and Yogi was loud.

“We could’ve been thought of as part of a good cop, bad cop duo, but I don’t remember too many choice words.

“It’s true Yogi would be the first person you’d want beside you in the trenches in a war, but there’s much more to him than simply being a hard man.

“His philosophy is to play football that’s easy on the eye and he will be hurting at losing 10 goals in games with Celtic and Dundee United before drawing a blank against Hibs on Wednesday. But he’ll also know football changes quickly.”

Coyle left Falkirk as he had given his word he would join McCall at Dundee United to continue playing.

Coyle said: “I told John he should look after himself and recommended to the board at Falkirk that he was ideal for them because he cared so much about the game. He won promotion to what was then known as the SPL by the end of the following season.

“Now he’s in Inverness after losing his job at Hartlepool, but I don’t see the time in England as a blemish on his cv.

“By the time he got there, they were on such a bad run their scores had fallen off the bottom of the results page in the newspaper.”

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Owen Coyle with Derek McInnes and fellow new signing Colin Samuel after signing in 2003

McInnes, co-incidentally, went to Aberdeen after a decent start to management life in England with Bristol City eventually resulted in dismissal from a troubled club with internal difficulties that affected results on the park.

But Coyle knew Derek’s personal standards would’ve been unaffected by what had happened to him.

He said: “I was still at Dundee United as a player when Derek came there from West Brom.

“I knew the sacrifices he’d made on a family basis to return to Scotland but I never heard a mump or moan from him because he was the club captain and the way he conducted himself was important to him.

“So when I left Tannadice to become St Johnstone manager I tried to take Derek with me.

“He’d already done a deal to join Millwall, unfortunately, but when he left there I got him to McDiarmid Park and he was sensational for Saints.”

McInnes’ qualities came to the fore in 2007 when Coyle joined Burnley as boss on the eve of St Johnstone’s Challenge Cup Final with Dunfermline. He added: “Sandy Stewart knew he’d be joining me at Burnley, but he and Derek took the team for the cup final and won the game to give the club its first trophy.

“I told then Saints chairman Geoff Brown how much I believed in Derek as my successor as manager.”

Coyle believes Aberdeen have got the same, unaffected personality he recommended to St. Johnstone.

He said: “I’d sum Derek up as being intense, thoughtful and forward thinking.

“Aberdeen have won nothing for nearly 20 years and could potentially have two cups by the end of this season.

“But Derek won’t get too far ahead of himself because he’s always been level-headed. He’s done a huge job at Pittodrie and there’s much more to come.”

“The irony is that Coyle, while discussing two friends about to go head-to-head in a cup final, is the one who’s in the market for a job.

His work as a television pundit is overflowing but he says he’ll know when the time is right to move to the other side of the camera and get back into the managerial front line.

He said: “I’ve been offered jobs since I left Wigan last December but I’ve declined them. I don’t need to take the first one that comes along, I need to take the right one.

“I’m from a family of nine and when my father lost his job he had to find one the next day to support his family, but football’s been good to me.”